Lawyers celebrate the Supreme Court's decision on the NRO in Lahore. From all the jubilation being witnessed it would seem that all our troubles are now over. But cynics like me are nervously waiting for the fallout. –Photo by AFP/Arif Ali

Over the years, many court decisions have shaped Pakistan’s fate, usually for the worse. Is this how history will view the latest judicial twist? Or will the Supreme Court decision striking down the National Reconciliation Ordinance be seen as the historic judgment that eradicated corruption?

From all the jubilation being witnessed in the country following the announcement of the ruling, it would seem that all our troubles are now over, and that we can look forward to a golden era of transparency and good governance. But some cynics like me are not holding their breath: instead, we are nervously waiting for the fallout.

During the lawyers’ movement for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Nawaz Sharif declared at a televised rally: ‘Once the chief justice is restored, I swear upon God that all of Pakistan’s problems will be solved!’ (‘Jub chief justice sahib wapis apne odhay pay lag jayengai, to mein Khuda ki qasam katha hoon kay Pakistan kay saray maslay hal ho jain gay!’

Well, the chief justice was restored some months ago, and as I was away for some of this time, I can be excused for not noticing that all our problems had been solved. But as far as I can tell, we are still struggling with loadshedding; prices have not suddenly come down; and above all, the jihadis seem to have missed Nawaz Sharif’s speech altogether because their terrorist activities have increased, if anything.

So who are the winners and the losers of this judgment? Obviously, the 8,000 or so people on the National Accountability Bureau list will now have to face a revival of the corruption charges that had been lying moribund for up to 20 years. The PPP government will be reeling from a reactivation of charges against several of its top leaders, including Asif Zardari.

The MQM, the biggest beneficiary of the NRO, won’t really feel the heat as the party supremo is now a UK citizen, and is living comfortably in London. Everybody else in the party, as we all know, is expendable. Does the fact that the MQM refused to support the government in voting on the NRO in the National Assembly indicate that a deal had been cut between the party and the establishment? In the event, the strategy worked in cutting the ground from under the government’s feet.

A big winner would seem to be Nawaz Sharif as his main rival now finds himself slowly twisting in the wind. However, this gain could be temporary as any destabilisation of the nascent democratic system could well rebound against him.

The higher judiciary now is widely respected for its activism, pronouncing on everything from the privatisation policy to sugar prices. Where defunct and discredited politicians once made a beeline for GHQ to find sympathetic ears, they now file constitutional petitions.

Whatever else happens, one thing is for sure, and that is our legal community will be assured of work for many years to come. Given the thousands of people who will need bail before arrest, and then subsequent legal advice and representation, our lawyers will be gainfully employed for a long time. However, given their efforts and sacrifices during their movement to restore the chief justice, they surely deserve all the breaks they can get.

More than individuals, we should be looking at the impact of the judgment on the system. Musharraf, for sordid reasons of political survival, and a desperate need to find a political ally to bail him out of his self-created mess, issued the NRO in 2007. This allowed the political process to move forward.

We can all criticise the moral bankruptcy of the NRO till the cows come home. Nobody can seriously deny the proposition that those accused of corruption should be tried, and if guilty, be punished. The problem, as usual, lies in the implementation of this principle. These cases have been languishing in courts for years, with some of them dating back 20 years. If our courts could not reach a verdict in all this time, what makes us expect an overnight transformation in their efficiency?

Anybody who has visited our lower courts will understand the serious defects in our judicial system. Inundated with a huge backlog of cases, saddled with archaic and arcane procedures, and riddled with corruption themselves, it is hard to see how these tribunals will be able to hand out swift judgments. And even if they do, our elaborate system of appeals will ensure that these cases remain subjudice for the duration of any normal lifespan.

Those of us who seriously believe that this judgment will eradicate corruption are in for a rude shock. Bribery and venality are the lifeblood of a creaking system, and without the kickback and the greased palm, our entire bloated bureaucracy would come to a grinding halt.

However, instead of addressing the problems of our deeply rooted institutionalised corruption, our prosecutors and investigators are invariably turned loose on political opponents as soon as governments change. As the establishment tends to view the sins of the PPP much more seriously than it does those of other parties, many more of its leaders figure on these witch-hunts. Thus, Nawaz Sharif not only escaped a death sentence, he spent the last few years in comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia.

None of this is to suggest that corrupt leaders should not undergo due process. But by the same token, the process should be transparent and across the board. In this case, since the vast majority of those named and shamed on the NAB list are from Sindh, are we being asked to believe that politicians and bureaucrats from the much larger Punjab province are as clean as the driven snow? Or are Sindhi leaders of the PPP government being victimised yet again?

One would have thought that at a time when our army is finally fighting Pakistan’s enemies in Fata, the government should be focused on this battle for survival. Instead it is being harassed and distracted. In wartime, it is traditional for the opposition to close ranks with the government in the national interest. What we are witnessing the steady unravelling of the consensus that had been so painstakingly built up just a short while ago.

But there is still time to pull back from the brink. Nawaz Sharif needs to show clearly and unequivocally that he and his party stand by the PPP, and will not accept any kind of extra-constitutional deviation. Otherwise, we will be on the slippery slope of military rule yet again.

irfan.husain@gmail.com